What David Cameron should say at today's Brussels summit

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, when I say that I take no pleasure in the troubles of the euro zone. Every one of you around this table represents a friendly country. Your economies account for half my country’s trade. The prosperity of the EU is vital to the success of the United Kingdom.

My own view is that such prosperity would best be secured by allowing each state to tailor its monetary policy to suit its needs. Let countries leave the euro if that is what their economic situation demands: let them print their own currencies, set their own interest rates, determine their own exchange rates. Let them price themselves into the market: that would be a greater economic stimulus than any cash transfusion.

Of course, as many of you have just reminded me, it is not my place to suggest such a course: I simply offer my advice in a communautaire spirit. It is my place, however, to defend the essential interests of the United Kingdom. So let me make clear that my country will not participate in any moves towards “European economic government” (to use your phrase, Mr Van Rompuy) or “fiscal federalism” (to use yours, Mr Barroso).

We will not accept any increase in the financial liabilities of member states outside the euro: my country’s national debt has risen by £900,000 since I started speaking. I will not ask my taxpayers to borrow even more money in order to send it to Greece or Spain. We will not participate in any machinery for fiscal transfers, neither a European Monetary Fund, nor a European Debt Agency nor any other such mechanism.

Neither shall we accept the idea the idea that anyone other than the House of Commons should have first sight of the British budget. Some of you will know that a civil war was fought in my country to establish Parliamentary prerogative in finances. We are not prepared to abandon that principle because of a crisis in a currency which is not ours.

Nor, indeed, can we agree to any proposals for tax harmonisation. In particular, we reject the idea of a Tobin tax or other levies on financial transactions. London is the EU’s financial centre: this is a red-line issue for us.

Which brings me to the most important objection of all. The proposals for common European regulation of banking and financial services would, in my view, have a disproportionate and deleterious impact on the economy of the United Kingdom. We are not prepared to have an industry which accounts for perhaps an eighth of our GDP to be overseen by governments with negligible financial sectors of their own.

I understand that some of these proposals, like the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, can be pushed through by Qualified Majority Vote. You should understand, though, that we have no intention of implementing any such measures. The City of London is every bit as important for me, Mr Sarkozy, as agricultural subsidies are for you. So I shall do what France did when it was ordered to accept British beef exports: I shall politely decline to enforce the directive.

There is no point in shouting, gentlemen. The crisis in the euro zone is not of my making. If you want to keep the euro alive, at huge cost to Northern European taxpayers and Southern European workers, that is, as you say, your business. But don’t look to Britain for money. We kept the pound. This isn’t our problem.